


Drained

by leoki (ladyleoki)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (more or less?? character centered at least), Character Study, Dark, Gen, Gun Violence, Implied Relationships, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyleoki/pseuds/leoki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Sherlock's battle for justice comes to an end the two men closest to Jim Moriarty finally meet, and neither of them has anything left to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drained

**Author's Note:**

> Written before Season 3 - All relationships are implied, but not carried out in the fic itself.  
> This fic is mainly centered around Sherlock and what the two years of bringing down the network do to him, as well as exploring the dynamic between Sherlock and Sebastian.

There are things that have happened but shouldn’t have, and there are things that should have happened but didn’t.  
Sherlock tends to regret neither of them. Perpetual war against his wrongdoers has worn him out, and there’s no space left in his mind for petty emotions or thoughts about the would and could have been’s of his situation.  
He’s become a soldier, with no more mercy to be found in his hollow heart, hope replaced by anger, sorrow replaced by bitterness. Fighting the battle of the restless, no plural, just him alone against all that Jim built up so thoroughly. Twenty-eight years, devoted to turning the world into a scene of destruction. Letting it burn. Sherlock could have gone down that road, certainly. Maybe the only thing that prevented him from taking that path is his dependency on recognition and approval that developed in his childhood, back when his life revolved around Mycroft and the pleasing of him.  
Now that his pride is lost, there should be nothing to hold him back. But he’s not fighting this battle for himself. There’s John and there’s Molly and all the people that believe in him. They were his friends once, and he owes them a debt. None of them should have been pulled into what started out as a game between Jim and him. None of them deserve to suffer because of private skirmish that turned into an international disaster.

  
Undoubtedly, John is the best thing that has happened to him his whole life. Jim, however, was the most exciting – an event in himself, Mr Supernova, destruction and creation united in a single man. A danger to the whole of Britain and Sherlock’s ultimate satisfaction. But now is not the time to be sentimental and long for his greatest and most likely ever-to-be unmatched adversary. Neither should he wonder what could have become of the two equals, had Jim not ended it all so abruptly with his twisted riddles and the bullet he put in his mouth.  
Jim is dead and all that is left of him are tiny, barely connected pieces of a once great network, scattered across the world. Brian Wilkerson, Boston. Mio Kazari, Hiroshima. Sebastian Moran, Brussels. Those three are left and while each of them will be a treat to bring down, Sherlock looks particularly forward to the last one. Moran’s reputation is more than impressive and while Sherlock has never met him, he’s heard enough.

  
Also, killing him means he’ll finally be able to return home.

  
You’d think getting back to the people you love and care about – as much as your messed up sociopathic mind allows you to – would be something worth fighting for. But the thought alone makes Sherlock feel uneasy. He’s left that world behind for good. Drained of humanity, he evolved into a whole different being. Back to the rational machine John once called him – even though he was the one who brought more emotion to Sherlock than anyone before him, back in their lodgings in Baker Street.  
He’s a victim of weeks spent in loneliness, his only company the sharp taste of revenge. Bloody in his mind and on his hands, getting even with Jim has taken over his thoughts. Not because of blind rage that he has never been the type for. Jim’s betrayal demands pay-back, regardless of his state. Sherlock has principles and, dead or not, Jim will receive what he deserves.

  
It isn’t so much what Jim did to innocent people or even to Sherlock himself. Discrediting him in the public has been a brilliant scheme.  
Getting separated from his friends was a price he would have been willing to pay.  
Losing both his friends and his only true distraction from the terrors of his mind broke every unspoken rule of their corrupt game.

  
Sherlock wishes he could have pulled himself out of the affair so easily. Sometimes he wonders if Sebastian knew, if Jim’s suicide was long-planned and the one idea even Sherlock hadn’t foreseen. He’d like to be as selfish as Jim and off himself too, but that would mean one and a half years of wasted work with Moriarty’s web. Had he truly wanted to die, he could have just thrown himself off the rooftop without any precautions. But of course, Sherlock had to be clever.  
He isn’t so sure of that nowadays. Whether finding a way to fake his death has been what Jim wanted. Staying Alive hasn’t been Jim’s endgame, that much he showed Sherlock rather bluntly on the roof of St. Bart’s. Maybe he’s read it all wrong and Jim wanted Sherlock to take the gun out of Moriarty’s hand and follow his steps. Shake hands with him in hell. It was all big talk, in the end. Sherlock’s blatantly ordinary, not even remotely close to the intellectual miracle Jim has been all his life - and yet so far from normal, it’s almost pathetic. A demon on the angels’ side, too cowardly to join his kind, and in result an eternal misfit.

  
The only place he finds himself blending in is the busy streets of Boston, somewhere on Melnea Cass Boulevard. Of course, he still doesn’t belong. But no one even looks at him twice and that’s good enough. He knows why he likes large cities. Anonymity means security in these times; blissfully relaxing compared to the chivvy prior to the Fall. The Reichenbach Hero can move swiftly again, thankful for the blindness and ignorance around him that allows him to pass without notice.

  
As night turns into day once more, Brian Wilkerson is found dead in the streets. Sherlock’s hands are long clean, which is more of a precaution than a necessity. The police will follow the usual procedure required by law, then let the case disappear in the archives. Sherlock will have done them a favour, since one of Moriarty’s people can only have meant trouble to law and order.  
He’s almost sorry to leave Boston again. It had been a while since he’s heard native English speakers on his way before; he’s grown accustomed to foreign accents and languages he doesn’t understand. Not being able to express himself properly leaves him irritated and with a disadvantage he’s never quite had before.

Soon it will all be over and he will be back in familiar surroundings. Back with his skull and his violin, seated in his armchair in the buzzing city of London. Home.  
He’s got three flights and about £1600 left, thanks to Mycroft who sponsors his trip around the world. It’s in his interest too, after all. Even without the computer code, Moriarty always proved himself dangerous to the British government. Jim could have won wars with his brilliant mind, had he wanted to. Not that he ever cared about politics. They were merely a playground for power-hungry men – boring, pointless, overrated. All he wanted was to play the game and to occupy his mind, whatever measurements required.  
Sherlock knows what it feels like. His mind never shutting up, raging on like a machine out of bounds. They both have – or had – their ways of dealing with it. Drugs, murder, cases, schemes. Neither of them has ever had the ambition to be a good man, to rely on virtues or what people think of as respectable deeds. In the end, it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, no one cares and everyone dies. If anyone knows that, it’s Sherlock.

  
Except that he didn’t die, but Jim did and his sullen, lifeless eyes still follow Sherlock through his sleepless nights. He’s rational enough not to feel guilty, thank god. Yet he knows it could have gone different. He should be glad he came out on top, put all his energy into achieving this.

  
It’s only now, after the show’s over and the curtains are drawn, that he realises being alive does not equal winning. It’s not about surviving. Winning means deciding over your own fate and leaving the other at a dead end. Winning means power, alive and post-mortem.  
Jim gave Sherlock no chance to stop him. Left him behind with nothing but his last master puzzle, created for Sherlock to solve.

  
How crooked those minds must be, to choose their complement as their greatest enemy.

  
The plane takes off to Tokyo. Sherlock’s managed to find an issue of the Daily Telegraph at the airport and flicks through it, his brain only half focused. Floods in Devon. British debt level increases. Prince Harry spotted drunk.  
Tediously boring.  
There’s one article that catches his attention, eventually. It’s nothing special really, something about gender inequality in different jobs and professions. What makes it so interesting is that it’s written by Kitty Riley. She’s alive, then, and still got a job as a journalist. He’s glad to see, somehow. While her life doesn’t matter much to him, at least she doesn’t add to the ever-growing list of innocent people who fell victim to Jim’s uncompromising brilliance. It’s only now that Jim’s dead that Sherlock sees the true extent of the situation. London? Merely home to the main actors, but the backstory stretches out over the whole globe.

  
Somewhere in the abyss of his mind, where all the stuff he shouldn’t be thinking about, but still does, goes, bordering the mind palace, he’s thanking Jim for all of this. None of the henchmen leave him in awe, but their ways and methods still have Moriarty written all over them. He left his mark, of course he did, this is James Moriarty who makes - made, Sherlock has to remind himself - every spot he ever touches spin around him in a perpetual spiral of doom. Teaching a few aimless, if highly intelligent people his ways must have been children’s play. But it’s been enough to make his ghost stick to this earth, embodied in different lost minds that were either terrified or hypnotized by the criminal. He’s glad there’s still something, even if they all make a piss-poor excuse for their creator and his ideas, anything to keep him from going back to the dull nothingness he’s had so much of in his life already. With every thread of the web he destroys, every of Moriarty’s allies he murders the countdown shrinks, the clock ticks louder and he can almost taste the black and bitter emptiness again.  
He tries to tell himself that this time it’ll be different because this time he’s got John, his loyal soldier that never ceases to stick with him, but he knows far too well that his mind doesn’t give a damn. His selfish, forsaken brain that goes right into self-destruction mode once it’s not used to full capacity is indifferent to anything but data data data and work busy busy numbers figures facts and John’s boring, so boring when there’s nothing beside him. If anything, John drives him crazier with his idle, ordinary mind, and Sherlock would never admit it, but when everything goes wrong it makes him so very jealous. He wishes he wasn’t special, because special in his case is five percent skill and ninety-five percent fucked up to the core, daily struggle with scarce reward. He’s learned to live with it, accept and even cherish it but he’s still afraid of the ever-present enemy commonly known under the term brain.

  
Even Sherlock Holmes, who is believed to be a sociopath by just about anyone he knows, shouldn’t be left alone for too long. He notices how the loneliness wears him off; how it darkens his thoughts and makes him uncomfortably sentimental. What people are right about is that he’s not the type for small talk with strangers, never quite fit with superficial conversations. It doesn’t make a difference anyway when he needs to stay unheard and unseen, only visible to his victims before they close their eyes for the very last time. But he misses…speaking. Voicing a mush of thoughts into straight lines, putting threads into strands. Feeling that something keeps him grounded, protects him from going over his head.  
It’s hard to tell what’s real when you’re alone. Even harder not to lose your grip on reality, though who could hold it against him when Death and Loneliness are all around him, luring him to give in to the crazy part of his mind. But he needs to be lucid, his mind sharp and focused to meet the man who’s said to be Moriarty’s right hand.

  
First there’s Mr Kazari though. Thirty-four years old, graduated from Oxford at the age of twenty-one, one of the most influential men in his country. This one will create outrage, and he needs to be all the more careful. Fortunately he has formed his plan months ago, had more than enough time to think everything through, and they don’t call him a genius for nothing.  
It’s still a mystery to him how Jim ever convinced Kazari to work for him. From what he gathered – and Mycroft’s records are infallible, that much he has to give his brother – Kazari is an orthodox, moral man, keen on keeping his country in order. But then you only have to dig deep enough to find any powerful man’s dirty secrets. He shouldn’t be surprised, really, should be used to the persuasive powers of Jim Moriarty after two years of clients, co-workers, clerks and slaves. Not slaves in the common sense of the word, naturally. But working under Moriarty brings a certain sense of ownership with it, a devotion unknown to legal employees.  
Mio Kazari is the first man Sherlock kills in his sleep. It’s strangely intimate, putting the capsule into the open, snoring mouth. In half an hour’s time, saliva will have broken down the casing and released the poison inside. Twenty minutes later, Mio Kazari’s heart will stop for good. Sherlock will be long gone by then, as untraceable as the poison itself.  
The next morning, Kazari is found dead by his cleaning staff. His death is identified as a natural one.  
Of course Sherlock would know how to trace the poison, but he’s grateful the Hiroshima Police Department doesn’t.

Five hours later, he’s on the plane to Brussels. There’s nothing to do, so after trying to sleep and failing, he tries to think about the murders he committed, tries to feel remorse but doesn’t because these people lived more in forty years than most geezers ever did, and they deserved to die. It was practically in their job description. Sherlock knows this, and yet it shouldn’t be this easy, there should be moral conflict, guilt, shame. But there isn’t.

There’s a text from Mycroft after he’s landed:  
 _Well done. Give Mr. Moran my love._  
So Moran stayed put. He must know Sherlock is coming for him, he’s clever enough and one of the henchmen Sherlock didn’t deem important enough to kill must have told him about Kazari.  
He can put one and one together. He knows.

There are only two possibilities, then.

  
Either he wants to kill Sherlock or he wants to be killed by Sherlock.

  
His heartbeat quickens at the prospect of danger. Sebastian Moran excels at shooting, as an army man, trained sniper and, of course, Moriarty’s right hand. Sherlock wouldn’t be a match for him, not even remotely. But what he lacks in shooting skills he makes up for with intelligence: He would be able to predict Moran’s actions. He can outsmart Moran, definitely, but it won’t be easy and finally, finally there will be a proper challenge. He smiles at the thought of it, and tries not to think about what will happen once his job is done.  
Pretending to arrive unexpectedly is no use, so he just takes a cab straight to Rue de L’Etuve. The shabby flat Moran has is terribly unlike him, at least for a permanent place to stay. Nothing of the chic, sterile ambience Moriarty so cherished has stayed and is instead replaced by minimalist second hand furniture, as far as Sherlock can see from standing a few meters away, looking inside the second floor window. The lights are turned out but it’s still early enough in autumn for the sun to shine at this time of the day, so Sherlock can see just fine. It all doesn’t make sense though. While Moran is obviously not present, someone like him would never leave the blinds up or the window open when going outside. Something’s wrong, something’s very wrong and it all doesn’t add up and –  
Oh.  
“You might wanna take a look up here!” A voice shouted from the rooftop. Of course. Naturally. He should have thought of that.

  
\---  
Facing Moran is shocking at first. He’s seen his face before, of course, in photographs and video footage. He knows how old he is. But seeing that face in person, appearing like twenty-one if not for the scars and the near-dead eyes, is something completely different. He can barely imagine the boyish face this man must have had four years ago, when Moriarty hired him and he really was twenty-one years old.  
Despite the fine features dominating his face, the scars give an approximate idea of just how much he has done under Moriarty already, make his face look rough and worn out. It doesn’t make sense, this face, like a man’s face with a boy’s features. Sherlock finds himself oddly fascinated.  
Something in Sebastian’s look makes him stop. He seems to be a man who despises waiting, who desperately wants to get this over with. This moment is what he has been waiting for, what has kept him going for two years now.  
He’s planned this. There are next to no houses with flat roofs in Brussels – too few to be coincidence. And what else would you expect from Jim Moriarty’s successor?

  
“Like old times, isn’t it?” He grins too wide and his eyes shine too mad. Sherlock is not sure whether Sebastian wants to impress him or has to hold himself back from killing Sherlock this instant.  
“You set up all this just to recreate the death of him, did you? Impressive.”  
Sebastian scoffs. “Don’t have much else to do these days, with everyone else being dead.”  
“You could have stopped me.”  
“But I didn’t.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because you wanted me to. You’re like him. You live for the kicks, only you take down what he created. Working against me of all people would have only gotten you more excited, and why would I give you that?”

  
“Your boss seemed to like doing it.” Sherlock smirks, not being able to stop rubbing salt into the wound.  
“Yeah, couldn’t keep his hands off you, the bastard. But he’s dead.”  
Sherlock’s stomach twists uncomfortably. He had kept a glimmer of hope until now, that maybe, somehow – but no.  
“I would have thought you’d stay loyal to him. Keep the network up in his honour or something.” His voice has turned resentful.  
“What for? Sentimental value? It’s not like Jim gave a shit about the crime. He wasn’t in it for the power, or the money. He just needed the danger, and didn’t care how to get it. Would have joined you and the rest of the saints if it was more fun.” He fumbles in his jacket pocket and takes out a cigarette and a lighter. “Want one?” He asked casually.  
“Obviously.”

  
They sit down together on a little ledge, inhaling into hollow cheeks, exhaling fine grey hazes.  
“I don’t understand” Sherlock begins. “You liked this just as much as him. How can you give it up? It’s not like you, or him, it doesn’t make sense.”  
Sebastian looks up and for the first time, his age is written in his face. “I can’t. I don’t have the names, methods, secrets; I’ve got nothing on them. The clients won’t trust me without that knowledge either. Son of a bitch went to hell and dragged me down right with him, all because the bastard’s fucking incapable of trusting anyone.”  
For a second, Sherlock almost feels sorry for him, but then he knows he’d do the same. Has done the same, in a way, doesn’t trust John enough to tell him the truth.  
Moran flicks the cigarette to the ground in frustration and stumps it out. There’s an awkward silence between them for a few seconds – Sherlock didn’t expect anything as personal as this, but now he figures Moran doesn’t care either way about what happens now, what Sherlock knows or doesn’t know, or what he thinks about him. He’s given up. Boring, so boring. Sherlock sighs.  
“What are you here for, anyway?” Moran asks, almost spitting it out again. It sounds contemptuous, like a stubborn teenager, but is presumably just the voice of a man who is trying too hard to sound casual while awaiting his death.

  
“You know why I’m here.” What a ridiculous question. Moran is intelligent to know why, or he would have never been that close to Moriarty. So he’s obviously just trying to make conversation – Sherlock hates when people do that. He’d rather people would just keep quiet, but they seem unable to do that.  
“Thought so, but you still haven’t done anything.” Moran counters.  
“I wanted to get my answers first. But well, let’s get it over with then.” He takes a gun out of his pocket and lets it slide in his hands first, trying to get used to the cold metal. He grins as he sees just how hard Moran is trying to keep it together. “You weren’t the only one who wanted to bring back the good old times.” He says, his voice cold and sadistic. He’s in killer mode now, something he has become a little too good at in the past months.  
“Is that…his?” Sebastian asks.

  
“Precisely, and not only that, but also the gun he killed himself with.” Sherlock lets the words roll over his tongue, smooth and delicate.  
There’s nothing but silence for a few moments until Sebastian swallows and speaks. “Go on then. Kill me. I’m not interested in living another few months before some other justice loving, pathetic good-doer decides to get rid of me for good. I won’t stop you.” He’s stood up while speaking, now spreading his arms in a welcome gesture.  
If Sherlock didn’t count on making Moran’s death seem like a suicide, he’d punch him right there. He was supposed to be the final challenge, the reward after twenty-two months of simply doing what had to be done. And now he’s nothing at all. Moriarty made his death the big finale, Moran just quits half-way through. It’s not fair, this could have been good, so good, but now it’s all turned to ashes. Nothing but a big fucking disappointment.

Instead, he takes his coat off and wordlessly walks a few steps until he stands just behind Moran who knows what Sherlock is doing perfectly well, has probably done it himself numerous times.  
“Faking yet another suicide, huh?” He scoffs.  
“Give Jim my love when you’re in hell. I do awfully miss him.” Sherlock replies before putting one arm around Moran’s throat to steady him and pressing the muzzle against his temple with the other.  
“You bet I will.” His last words are calm, almost lightly spoken at the prospect of death. Milliseconds later the bullet enters his brain and Sherlock is left with a lifeless body in his arms. There are blood splatters all over him, painting a picture of death on his lily-white shirt.

After half an hour of arranging the body and cleaning up traces, even he could probably be fooled into believing Sebastian Moran killed himself.

  
He takes the dog tags as a token, since he can’t keep the gun any longer.


End file.
